The present invention relates generally to online searching and advertising methods and apparatus. More particularly, the present invention relates to dynamic bid pricing for sponsored search.
Sponsored search systems allow advertisers and information providers an added degree of control over the presentation of their advertisements or online information to users of online systems. U.S. Pat. No. 6,269,361, entitled “System and Method For Influencing A Position On A Search List Generated By A Computer Network Search Engine,” issued Jul. 21, 2001 and commonly assigned with the present application, discloses one such sponsored search system. Such a system provides a method for managing search listings of information providers or advertisers in a pay for placement search database. A pay for placement search system allows information providers to bid on keywords or search terms. The pay for placement search system or sponsored search marketplace is offered by an online service provider who maintains the necessary databases and servers to provide online access to users and advertisers or information providers. Information providers' search listings generally include a search term and other text or a banner advertisement which is searched for a match with a submitted search query. A user uses a browser program to submit a search query to a search engine which searches the database, including the search terms of the information providers' search listings. An example of such a system may be found on the World Wide Web at searchmarketing.yahoo.com. U.S. Pat. No. 6,269,361 is incorporated in its entirety herein by this reference.
In such a system, when a user through a search engine searches the database for a particular keyword or search term on which the information provider has bid, the information provider's search listing is displayed to the user with other search results. Conventionally, search listings with higher bid amounts are displayed more prominently among the search results, usually at the top of the list where they are seen first by the user. If the user clicks through a search listing, the user's browser is re-directed to the information provider's site and the information provider is charged an amount equal to the bid amount he has bid on the search listing.
Thus, pricing of information in such a system corresponds to the bid amounts set by the information providers. The bid amounts are managed by information providers in an active bidding process. An information provider may raise or lower a bid on a keyword according to a variety of factors, including advertising budget, market conditions and the presence and activity of other information providers in the sponsored search marketplace. Other bid pricing models have been developed for sponsored search systems.
There are other factors that are not currently taken into account in sponsored search pricing models. For example, a marketplace may be more dynamic and may change more rapidly than information providers can react to manage their bids. One example is a sudden surge in popularity or interest in a celebrity or a product. In such a circumstance, the relative pricing in the sponsored search market will not accurately reflect the actual market value of the information related to that celebrity or product. In this case, there is a time lag between actual market interest and market pricing.
Currently, major search engine operators offering sponsored search services for advertisers, such as Yahoo! Inc. and Google Inc., make available to advertisers user query data around keywords and phrases to assist with the bid process. While Yahoo! Inc. offers actual query counts for a selected key word or phrase and close equivalents during a fixed time period, Google Inc. only demonstrates the relative popularity of a selected key word or phrase and close equivalents over a fixed time period using unmarked bar charts and graphs. Advertisers can then make informed decisions about which key words or phases are relatively more popular and therefore which ones may be worth bidding on and, if so, how much to bid. However, the user query information offered is very static, in that it gives only a snap shot of user query information from the recent past.
Accordingly, there is a need in the sponsored search context for an improved system and method for pricing the information provided by advertisers and information providers.